The primary objective of food science and technology is to
provide "crowded populations . . . with the kind and quality
of food they demand at all times of the year" (1). Seen from
this point of view, tremendous progress has been achieved in
recent years in the field of food production, processing,
storage, and distribution. The main beneficiaries of these
developments have been the consumers living in urban centres. For
most of them food preparation has become easier, in many cases
cheaper, and in some cases of higher quality. The purpose of my
review will be to analyse how and to what extent these
developments in food science and technology have influenced the
situation of the agricultural producer and how they have
contributed to the transformations and changes in rural areas.

In this context also want to appraise the role of the food
processing industry, which like any other large-scale industry,
is oriented towards the maximization of financial gains and
profits. Frequently, this industry has promoted the development
of scientific and technological processes to produce foods of
elaborate quality to titillate the palates of already well-fed
consumers. Frozen "television dinners" and similar
articles to be found in supermarkets in the West may appear to
observers from developing countries to represent an extravagant
waste of scientific knowledge and technological skill. The
development of such products has been facilitated by the demand
of a financially potent group of consumers, which regulates the
food market. However, in the face of the depressing poverty of
agricultural producers in the Third World we have to deplore, as
has been done at previous congresses of the International Union
of Food Science and Technology (lUFoST), that there has been
little research on food legumes, roots, tubers, and rain-fed
rice, which are staple foods in many developing countries.

RECENT CHANGES IN RURAL AREAS

J. Hawthorn, the former President of the IUFoST, observed at
the Fifth World Congress the following developments:

Over the past hundred years . . . food science and technology
have altered the structures of our societies.... The most obvious
example is that, whereas a century ago three-quarters to
nine-tenths of our citizens lived by agriculture and on the land,
[today] in the developed countries at least the work of one
farmer feeds forty to fifty others. This is not merely due to
agricultural science but equally to the back-up of our food
processing industries.[2]

This process is still continuing and has repercussions on the
socio-economic situation of the agricultural producer. Its
effects have been most marked in the developed countries,
particularly in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. As
it would be beyond the scope of my intervention to elaborate on
developments in specific countries, I will limit myself to a
review of significant developments that have taken place in rural
Europe during the last 10 to 15 years. They can be summarized as
follows:

- Agricultural and food production have increased in all
countries, both in absolute terms and in terms of per capita
output.
- The number of people engaged in the agricultural sector has
drastically diminished. On the overall average, the share of
economically active people engaged in agriculture has been
reduced from 21 per cent in 1970 to 15 per cent in 1981, and has
reached as low a level as 2 per cent in the United Kingdom. While
the number of full-time farmers has decreased, the numbers of
farmers with additional income from non-agricultural sources and
of part-time farmers have increased.
- The area of cultivated farmland has gradually decreased in all
countries of Europe. An ever-increasing area of arable land is
kept fallow, and agricultural land is being used on an increasing
scale for non-agricultural purposes.
There is a general decrease in the number of farm holdings.
Smaller holdings are gradually disappearing.
There has been a continuous trend in the transformation of
agriculture from a labour-intensive to a capital-intensive
enterprise. While a certain saturation seems to have been reached
in many countries with regard to the number of farm machines,
there is a trend towards more sophisticated equipment.
An increasing number of farmers has switched from raising all
types of farm animals to only one type, while others have limited
themselves to cropping only and no longer engage in animal
husbandry.
There has been a marked concentration of animal hus- bandry in
specialized enterprises. More and more intent sive animal units
are being set up with little land and large numbers of animals
such as poultry, fattening pigs, fattening calves, and beef
cattle.
In animal production the trend goes towards the application of
ready-mixed and high-quality animal feeds, large-scale animal
husbandry with the application of pharmaceuticals, and technical
equipment.
In view of the specialization and concentration of production,
there is a growing tendency toward large-scale farming, which is
achieved through various forms of pooling inputs and through
contract farming in West Europe and through co-operation and
collectivization in Eastern Europe.
Despite the reduction of the agricultural labour force and the
decrease of farmland, farm production and productivity have
increased. The European Community produces surpluses in grain,
meat, milk, sugar, and wine, and their disposal has become
problematic. Many countries subsidize sales in order to encourage
exports of food.
Due to the mobility of the labour force, the level of income and
the type of social services available to the rural population
have come closer to those of urban people.

In the developing countries the socio-economic situation of
the rural population is drastically different. Yet even here
significant changes have taken place during the last 10 to 15
years. The general trend has been as follows:

- Agricultural and food production have increased in most
countries, if measured in absolute terms; this increase has been
largely attributable to better production techniques and the
introduction of high-yielding varieties. However, because of
population growth, output per capita has not increased, and in
many countries, particularly in Africa, food production per
capita has actually declined.
- While in relative terms the proportion of people engaged in
agriculture has continuously decreased, the total number of the
farming population has increased. This has led to a reduction of
the size of holdings and an increase in the number of the
landless.
- The areas under cultivation have increased. Land areas that
were formerly considered marginal or unproductive have been put
under cultivation in order to meet the demands of a growing
population.
- There has been a general increase in the number of farms,
particularly smaller farms. As the non-agricultural sectors do
not offer sufficient employment opportunities for the increasing
population in the rural areas, the pressure on the land is
growing, leading to further fragmentation.
- Land use is becoming more intensive.
- The number of tractors, harvester-threshers, and other farm
machinery has increased by more than 100 per cent, but the vast
majority of the farmers still use their manual labour and draft
animals for cultivation.
- In the field of livestock production progress has remained
slow, and most of the production, particularly in eggs and
poultry meat, has occurred outside the rural sector.
- Some countries have facilitated the establishment of a
"modern" agribusiness sector to produce exports such as
bananas, pineapple, coffee, rubber, and seafood.
- Many countries import an ever-increasing amount of food and
feed grains for their growing population, yet at the same time
some of them are exporting high-quality food.
- Despite increases in agricultural production the proportion of
the rural population that lives in poverty and is undernourished
has grown.

EFFECTS OF FOOD SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ON THE SOCIAL
SITUATION

The transformation of the social and economic situation of the
farming population described above has been the result of
numerous interrelated factors, both external and internal to the
agricultural sector. In this process, the means of production and
agrarian structure are interlinked, and their changes influence
each other mutually. In addition, development processes in the
farming sector are not independent anymore; they are part and
parcel of the overall economy and, therefore, are subject to
changes in the other sectors.

When assessing the contribution of food science and technology
on changes in the rural areas, we have to take into consideration
that they constitute only one element in this process. Other
factors, such as policy measures in the field of prices, taxes,
trade, and land tenure, have a much more direct impact and may
enhance or reduce the potential role of food science and
technology. Hawthorn described the situation as follows:

If food supply and distribution were simply a matter of
science and technology, our task would be easy because it is not
difficult to demonstrate that the biological resource of our
planet can support a human population greater than our present.
Unfortunately, economic and cultural factors often dominate and
sometimes swamp the sweet reason of our scientific disciplines.
On such factors our influence can only be indirect. [2]

Effects in Developed Countries

Technological developments in all spheres of agricultural
production, processing, and marketing have largely abolished the
economic independence of the individual farm-holding. It has
become dependent on and part of a steady inflow of inputs and
services into production and of a continuous outflow of
semi-finished products which are taken over by processing
factories, grading and packing stations, or supermarkets.

These developments have affected the institutional set-up in
the rural areas. In order to meet the challenges of the technical
innovations and to obtain economies of scale, agricultural
producers in Western Europe have gradually changed their patterns
of purchase, production, and marketing. In the past farmers
relied heavily on their traditional village co-operatives. But
technical and economic developments now call for larger primary
banks, integration into a regional or national banking system,
Iarger dairies, and modern, centrally located enterprises for
processing, transformation, and marketing.

The advantages of closeness to the members and of cooperative
democracy are thus automatically diminished. Old principles, e.g.
equal treatment of members, have receded in the face of
compelling economic forces. While cooperatives were originally
established to help the small farmers, now their economically
calculating managers consider small producers to be less
desirable members, because their involvement means higher costs
per unit of delivered inputs and collected output. Thus,
"modern" cooperatives wish to select their members
according to economic capacity. In many primary credit
co-operatives, farmers have become a minority, who badly need the
nonagricultural majority, but who cannot determine credit
policies anymore.

New forms of co-operation have been developed, such as
"banks" or co-operatives for joint utilization of
expensive farm machinery; these co-operatives are very common in
the Federal Republic of Germany, France, and Austria, and are
somewhat common in the Netherlands and Norway. Both traditional
and modern arrangements for joint pasture of cows and calves are
widespread in Norway and Switzerland. Cooperative cowsheds in
large number have been established in Norway. Full merger of
farms and the formation of larger production units has become
quite common in France in the form of the "groupements
agricoles d'exploitation en commun."

Besides new co-operative forms serving several farms in
specific areas of production, various types of private
contractors and service enterprises have come up offering many
field operations and services ranging from ploughing to
harvesting, drying, and transportation. Some basic products, e.g.
sugar beets and barley for malt, have been traditionally produced
by contracts and delivered to one processing factory. However,
vertical integration has recently been extended to cover other
products, such as fruits, peas, carrots, and other vegetables.
Co-operation between agricultural producers and processors in the
form of contract farming has also found its place in the
production and processing of broilers. In some Northern and
Western European countries agricultural producers have joined
forces and established or acquired factories for the processing
of their crops. The producers have become involved in food
distribution and thus derive additional income from such
activities.

While some old institutions like co-operatives have lost or
changed functions, the new organizational forms seem to be better
adapted to the new situation and to meeting the emerging needs.
Many of the new problems cannot be solved in the framework of the
average individual holding; they rather demand co-ordination of
the decisions and operations of several or many holdings, be it
for the utilization of large-scale machinery or assistance in
field operations and marketing. More and more, the decisions
regarding marketing go back to the production stage and call for
co-ordination or even subordination of the individual opinion or
desire under the common interest.

This transformation in management has also affected other
established rural institutions, such as agricultural
administration, extension services, and farm institutes, which
are losing their clients. The political and professional
organizations in rural areas face the same fate. Their membership
dwindles and loses its social homogeneity.

Another typical phenomenon of the recent changes in social
conditions is the reduction of the agricultural labour force.
This decrease has fed to an age structure of the farm population
that is less favourable than that of other sectors. Older people
prefer to remain in their profession and place of residence,
while a growing share of the younger generation is leaving
farming for good. Thus, in Western Europe, an increasing number
of holdings have no successor, which again influences all
activities and leads to less investment and more extensive
cultivation, particularly of small holdings. The decrease of the
agricultural population has also affected the sex composition in
the rural areas. Due to the exodus of male workers from the
villages, the share of female workers has become higher than in
most other sectors in several countries. The easy availability of
convenience food for the working farm woman has facilitated this
trend.

The introduction of new techniques and practices in food
production has eliminated a considerable part of the traditional
work of a farmer and thus contributed to a steady increase of
part-time farming. In central and north-western Europe this type
of activity covers already more than 50 per cent of all holdings.
Countries in Eastern Europe, except Poland and Yugoslavia, have
experienced a drastic transformation in their agrarian and social
structure that is implied in collectivization. By far the
greatest part of the farm land is cultivated by collective or
state farms. Thus the tenurial barriers to the utilization of
modern technology have been removed.

These structural changes have been the result of political
decisions of the respective socialist governments. They cannot,
therefore, be directly attributed to the contribution of food
science and technology. One may argue, however, that the
political reason for collectivization was at least partly the
intention to make full use of science and technology and to
overcome the disadvantages of small family farms.

Effects in Developing Countries

Food science and technology have also influenced the social
conditions in developing countries. The most striking innovation
of the last ten years has been the introduction of the Green
Revolution, a package of agricultural practices combined with the
use of high-yielding varieties of rice and maize. It has resulted
in a large increase in the production of these crops. Several
countries that were net importers of food grain have become
self-sufficient, and some are even exporting food grains.

These new varieties have short maturation periods, natural
resistance to certain pests, and yield nearly four times as much
grain as traditional varieties. However, they require
fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation in order to grow.
Additionally, the seeds are expensive. The adoption of Green
Revolution technology has reverberated forcefully throughout the
entire fabric of rural societies. Its welcome effect on
production increases has been accompanied by negative social
consequences. It has generally benefited rich farmers more than
the poor, and income disparities have grown worse.

Green Revolution methods have tended to displace labour and
have increased rural unemployment, even though in theory the
methods should be labour-intensive because the high-yielding
varieties require more care and attention in ground preparation,
planting, and harvesting. When the cultivation of a second crop
is possible, the need for labour is doubled, but, because of its
labour intensity, the Green Revolution also provided incentives
for larger farmers to mechanize their farm operations and thus
dispose of manual labour. In India, Pakistan, and other countries
the Green Revolution has led to the eviction of tenants and
sharecroppers, because landowners have started self-cultivation.

In addition to the Green Revolution there have been major
increases in land and labour productivity in many countries,
which were made possible through the use of other modern
technology. However, in most instances the technology has
bypassed the small producer. The increase in the production of
poultry meat and eggs, for instance, has been concentrated in the
modern sector, where operations have tended to be peri-furban,
large-scale, and highly automated. Such production systems are
both energy- and capital intensive and have had little effect on
small farmers' incomes and on rural development. This expansion
has to a large extent occurred outside the traditional
agricultural sector in many countries, and has led to an
increasing dependence on foreign technology and production
requisites (3).

The vast majority of the rural population of the Third World
has not been affected by food science and technology. Little
research has been undertaken to increase the yields of such
staple foods as root crops and upland rice or to improve the
production techniques through multiple cropping, low-cost crop
protection, and appropriate mechanization. Little or no attention
has been given to the problems of pastoralism, which is an
important way of life in the Near East and North Africa, or to
cropping patterns in regions where shifting cultivation is a
common practice.

Even in fields for which food technologies have been
developed, the Third World has benefited very little. These
fields include improved storage, drying, handling, distribution,
and other measures to reduce post-harvest food losses In many
developing countries only traditional methods of food
processing-salting, drying, smoking, pickling, and
fermentation-are used. Since they involve considerable wastage,
the foods are neither adequate for small communities to feed
themselves and preserve supplies nor suitable for transport over
longer distances and storage for long periods of time, essential
if small producers want to sell to urban centres.

Institutional arrangements to improve this situation have been
lacking. Attempts of the rural poor to overcome their
difficulties by establishing co-operatives, as was done in the
developed countries some 100 years ago, have not been very
successful. In recent years many countries in South East Asia,
East and Southern Africa, and Central America, have experimented
with different forms of collective and co-operative agriculture.
Their experience has been a mixed one. While in most cases there
were clear gains in equity, the growth experience, with a few
notable exceptions, has tended to be rather disappointing. In
large part, this has been due to inappropriate policies of labour
organization and the remuneration on collective enterprises.

In most cases where agricultural co-operatives have been
successful, they have been organizations of the better-off
farmers and the rural elite. The rural poor were usually not
involved. The same lopsided development has taken place as a
consequence of assistance from governments through agricultural
extension, credit, and marketing services. They have tended to
benefit the richer farmers more than the poor.

The fate of the small agricultural producer has also been
affected by the expansion in recent years of the so-called
"modern" sector, established by foreign and national
agribusiness. For more than 100 years the former colonial powers
have been producing certain tropical crops such as coffee, tea,
and rubber in large plantations, which were centrally managed and
operated by hired labour. Some of these estates were taken over
by the newly established national governments after independence,
while others were allowed to continue their operations,
frequently under new regulations regarding the social situation
of their labourers, taxes, and investment.

As a result of new developments in food technology, an
increasing number of business enterprises have produced, in
developing countries under centralized management, luxury foods
such as bananas, pineapple, and seafood for export to developed
countries. In the Caribbean and in Asia, scarce cultivable land
has been taken over by national or international companies, which
have established an international network for cultivating,
processing, and marketing plantation crops. These companies
normally operate on the most fertile land located in the plains,
whereas the indigenous population has to eke out a precarious
existence in small holdings on less fertile land on the slopes of
hills surrounding these estates. In some countries, lands used by
transnational corporations (TNCs) were cultivated earlier by
occupant farmers who had to give up their holdings. Not all of
them have been employed by the companies, since they recruit
their labour according to their own needs and style of
management, which frequently do not include formerly independent
farmers who lost their holdings.

From the planners' point of view, luxury-foods agribusiness
brings considerable benefits. It provides employment, earns
foreign exchange, and diversifies the range of agricultural
production. In addition, the rise of peripheral industries
involved in freezing, canning, and other forms of processing
stimulates industrial growth. However, the orientation towards
the export of food products has also considerable disadvantages.
It is accompanied by a lower supply of cheap food for local
consumption. The argument for food exports as a means of
diversification would, therefore, be most relevant for countries
that have a surplus food production. In reality, however, many
poor countries are promoting the export of food despite serious
malnutrition at home. ASEAN countries (the Association of South
East Asian Nations), for instance, are exporting increasingly
more of their high-quality food products, which are badly needed
locally, giving preference to foreign exchange over local
nutritional development. In Thailand, Malaysia, and the
Philippines, seafood exports have expanded sharply, while at the
same time local consumption of this major protein source has
declined.

The argument that the export of luxury foods brings foreign
currency also needs further specification. As the gains from
export earnings usually accrue to the better-off section of the
society, such policy orientation tends to widen the gap between
the rich and the rural poor. Another drawback of the production
of luxury food is the heavy use of chemicals in agribusiness,
which has led to ecological damage and to health hazards.

The industry remains highly unregulated and an
"entrepreneur's paradise" (4). Quick profits can be
made by depleting land and marine resources. Luxury food export
is also an area where the TNCs are still very powerful, whereas
their control over the production and marketing of minerals and
basic agricultural commodities has been gradually weakened. State
enterprises, producer's cooperatives, or similar local
institutions that would benefit the producer have so far not
emerged as significant forces in this sector.

SUMMARY AND OUTLOOK

Our review of the contribution of food science and technology
to changes in rural areas, in both developed and developing
countries, has revealed that they have facilitated in the West
ongoing trends towards a more rational use of labour and capital
and brought about social improvements such as higher mobility,
less strenuous work, easier access to social services, higher
social status, and more leisure. These gains were particularly
welcome during periods of high employment. However, in view of
the deterioration of the labour market in recent years, their
evaluation should now be made more cautiously.

We have also noticed that the application of science and
technology in developing countries has not affected the majority
of their population. In some instances, they have tended to
support negative trends in unemployment, landlessness,
malnutrition, and poverty.

Such uneven distribution of benefits was usually not intended
and should not be attributed to the work of food scientists and
technologists. Their influence, as we have stated earlier, is
indirect and complementary to other developments in the overall
economy. It would, therefore, be irrational to expect that they
alone could solve all problems of malnutrition or rural poverty
in the world. Yet, in an era of increasing population, decreasing
energy resources, shortages of food, and increasing poverty, it
is essential that professionals who are knowledgeable in one area
of specialization be aware of the mechanisms whereby the others
operate. Agricultural planners and economists should not limit
themselves to problems of agricultural production but should take
into consideration the stages following production, i.e. the
preservation, packaging, storing, and distribution of
agricultural products to the consumers. On the other han-dand
this is the main reason for my intervention-food scientists and
technologists should be aware that their activities are not
without implications for the agricultural producer, the small
fisherman, or in extreme cases an even wider range of rural
people.

The FAO study Agriculture: Toward 2000 estimated that despite
a growing world population and increasing demands for improved
diets, the world is unlikely to face universal famine in the
immediate future (5). There is currently enough food produced to
feed the world's population if the right measures are taken for
at least the next 20 years. Nevertheless, millions of people in
developing countries as well as those in developed countries are
malnourished or starving. The reasons for this deplorable
situation are complex and cannot be solved overnight, by one
single measure. It requires the willing co-operation of
scientists, technologists, planners, and politicians as well as a
balanced adjustment between developed and developing countries
and producers and consumers.

Reviewing past experiences, we have to conclude that in the
West the application of food science and technology has been
oriented towards getting greater productivity in less working
time. It has demanded the development of continuous mass
production techniques as a means of reducing the costs of labour
and maximizing the benefit of high cost, automated plants and
equipment. While this development was well adapted to the
economic conditions of developed countries, it does not suit the
conditions of most developing countries. They have only one
really abundant source of capital, i.e. people. The need of these
countries is, therefore, not for expensive technology, which
produces expensive goods because of high costs for such items as
spare parts, imported fertilizer, a distribution system, and
energy. The need is for low-cost, labour-intensive equipment
which can improve the nutritional status and the availability of
cheap food for local consumption.

There is an urgent need for the development of appropriate
technology for small farmers. They should, for instance, be able
to make use of wind and solar energy for drying grain and other
food crops, including fish, which would reduce losses, improve
quality, and yield higher returns. Research should be intensified
on the production and processing of food to be consumed in
developing countries. There seems to be wide scope for improving
the technology of big-gas production and its application as well
as for the gasification of wood and dry wastes, such as coconut
shells, rice husks, and peanut shells, to operate engines for
agricultural purposes.

Efforts should be made to expand the sector of smallholder
livestock production. This might be slower to achieve than
through non-agricultural, large-scale enterprises, yet in the
long run will yield greater benefits in terms of self-reliance
and improved rural employment, incomes, and nutrition.

An important role in the application of food science and
technology has to be played at the policy-making level. When
allocating concessions to non-local enterprises and when deciding
priorities of food production for local consumption or for export
and between food and feed crops, consideration should be given to
the poorest and most needy groups of the society. The activities
of large enterprises and of TNCs should be controlled to make
sure that they do not contradict national policies and do not
benefit a few privileged people only but the majority of the
population.

The FAO has estimated that, by the end of the century, world
population and expected income growth would combine to increase
world food demand by 60 per cent above the 1980 level. In
developing countries the demand for food may more than double in
the same period. Also, as real income levels change, it is
expected that the demand will shift from traditional diets based
on cereals, roots, and tubers toward such food items as livestock
products, fruits, vegetables, and seafood (6). In order to meet
this demand it is essential for most low- and middle-level
countries to accelerate agricultural production. In addition,
access to food by the poor needs to be ensured, mostly through
increases in their income. Food must be made available more
widely and distributed better if the problems of the world's
hungry are to be reduced or totally eliminated. The number of
seriously malnourished people was estimated at more than 400
million in the middle seventies and is unlikely to have fallen
since the traditional conflict persists between the interests of
consumers wanting low, affordable food prices and of producers
requiring prices high enough to induce more production. This
conflict makes important the adoption of selective measures to
safeguard food consumption of the poorest and most vulnerable
segments of the population while price incentives to producers
are improved (6).

The continuous population growth in developing countries
combined with the increasing scarcity of land resources will lead
to higher rates of landlessness, indebtedness, and poverty and,
unless regulated, will result in further polarization between
rich and poor and lead to social unrest. It is, therefore, in the
interest of both developed and developing countries to evolve and
adopt policies to use limited resources cautiously and to promote
balanced social and economic development. Our aim should be, as
recommended by the World Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural
Development in 1979, to achieve economic growth with equity,
widespread improvement of the living standard, and effective
participation in development.